Do you have a career? Because if so, you are probably an Old or a Rich, given that they are not just letting people have careers anymore. See, careers are now for the idle wealthy, and the rest of us people can look forward to a life of hustling from one freelance gig to another, scraping together enough cash to live paycheck to paycheck and maybe even avoid crushing poverty if we’re lucky enough to never get sick or injured or require a sustained amount of medical attention. Doesn’t that sound nice? Here, we will talk about our future as temp workers, using this cheery Forbes article called “Careers are Dead. Welcome to Your Low-Wage Temp-Work Future” as a framework to guide our discussion.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, almost 30% of American workers are expected to hold low-wage jobs – defined as earnings at or below the poverty line to support a family of four – in 2020. This number will remain virtually unchanged from 2010. Given that roughly 50% of recent college grads are unemployed or underemployed and those who do work are much more likely to hold these types of jobs, this is a particular grim prospect for young workers hoping to leave these positions behind for greener career pastures.
Thinking you’ll get a temp job and slide on in to a permanent position? One that might even have benefits? And even an IRA? You and everyone else!
With low-wage occupations set to keep growing – even in economic hotspots such as Silicon Valley – most young workers may be destined to either cycle through a number of temporary positions in search of better wages and working conditions or resign themselves to juggling multiple low-wage jobs in order to support themselves if they aren’t able to find an entry point to the career track before they age out of their recent grad status.
Doesn’t that sound pleasant? And how LUCKY for you, that you took out thousands of dollars in student loans to train yourself for an occupation that doesn’t seem to exist. It’s OK though, if we just implement the Ryan Plan, Mitt Romney will fix it by giving us all the jobs we could ever want.
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I need a reason to finish this dissertation.
“Meet the bitterest person in the world: the grad school dropout."
-Matt Groening
No snark. If you have a PhD you can get away with stuff you otherwise couldn't. I did weird-ass vulgar mechanical sculpture for a while, and heard that people would shut up about me being crazy when told I had a PhD (in philosophy of art / ethics). Justified or not, people take it to mean something. Do it, 4TT!
deanbooth, years ago in a well-known library I will keep anonymous (still love the place) I worked for a human who had three MAs, in Celtic Studies, Medieval Studies, and PoliSci, and a PhD in history. He disappeared most afternoons about 3:00 to go get pissfaced at our local Chinese restaurant. So, for about $7/hour I did his work. At the time, I was a drop-out with half a BFA. Variations on this theme have played out in a significant number of libraries and archives where I or my friends have worked. So I both agree and vouch for your experience.
Unfortunately, it's easier to teach people history than to teach them not to be assholes.
It intimidates the people at your kid's high school when you need it.
Oh… that doesn't sound like you!
Usually it isn't at all me. But the hackles got raised at my daughter's high school orientation.
My daughter finally completed hers this year. Now we have to call her 'Doctor'. Its worth it just for that.
Well, if you're working on your dissertation, it means you're going to be like many of us here–not the kind of doctor who does anybody any good.
The danger is that you'll hear that damn'd word: "Overqualified." But I'd rather be overqualified than underqualified. Get 'er done.
Right after a friend of mine finished his philosophy PhD, a headhunter told him that it'd be better to tell prospective employers that he had been in prison for six years.
I finished my dissertation last year and got incredibly lucky: I now have a tenure track position in a not so great university. Going on the job market out of grad school seems like entering into a lottery–your success depends more on luck than on exceptional merit–but I know a lot of people who have gotten lucky in that lottery, and I am pleased to be one of them. In other words, "finish the dang dissertation!"
Just pronounce it "dessert-ation". Mmm, dessert….
I keep hearing "there's snow jobs." Are they like hand jobs, but with the icy grip of Death on the side? Ohhh. "There's no jobs."
Enjoy your Hobo beans; now with more fresh Hobo!
Yeah in the winter, you pick up a few extra bucks shoveling snow.
With climate change, even the snow jobs are declining.
What happens when all of the jorb creators die? (Or go Galt or whateverthefuck.)
Don't worry; the estate tax will be permanently repealed, so all their money will go to their children or mistresses or whatever. So it'll be creating just as many jobs as before (none).
Well, considering there aren't any…. I guess the demand for gravediggers won't be going up when they supposedly die…
Not much, By then the estate tax will have been passed and you'll be working for Mitt's Grandson.
Did Forbes find this article easy to masturbate to?
I'm sure Steve did.
Acne?
Steve or Malcolm? Malcolm only if it was accompanied by a photo of a large guy in leather.
If it's any consolation, he jacks off with scouring pads.
Romney sure as hell did.
You could get a career trying to keep the oceans from rising….hahaha.
Fucking hell.
Coincidentally, there is no such thing as a career at Forbes.
Wait, what are benefits?
Something my dad told me about in the olden days, but I don't know what they mean.
My parents both have some strange mysterious thing called a pension; now that one is really foreign from the experience of anyone under about 55.
It's when your boss fucks you over whenever he feels like it with none of the messy hassles that go along with a real worker-manager relationship, like healthcare or retirement.
Health-care? Re-tire-ment? Not sure what those things are.
It depends on how drunk you get your friend.
If you fire everybody, and rehire everybody as temps, then you've doubled the job count and incinerated those pesky "benefit packages." Score!
It's called "Baining."
You have now passed the test to become a market capitalist. Congratulations.
Need to lower the poverty level to say, $7,500 a year for a family of four, and then, problem solved! You just gotta think like a Bain executive.
The oldest proffesion is always an option.
Farming?
I assumed "Dressage Horse Trainer."
Yeah, but who can afford to be a client?
Not that I'm considering it…I mean, what do you take me for…um, what I meant was…
Politician?
Preaching?
Man boobs aren't as popular a fetish as one might think.
Copy editor?
Shut up, you.
The oldest proffesion is always an option.
Cannibalism?
Spell Checker?
Have you seen some of us?
Lawyer?
Hitler?
The Oligarchs Brave New World…….can hardly hold back my enthusiasm….:
I am reading this at my full time job with my feet on my desk. Oops.
Me too. I feel kind of guilty about that.
Me too. I'm sitting here waiting for an appropriate time to leave the office and get an early start on my holiday weekend. Paid holiday at that.
I am just about to fire off that "going to farm" email. They have gotten in the habit of asking me on Fridays…."are you going to the farm?"
Do you choke the chicken, down there on the farm?
I always thought that "going to the farm" was a euphemism your parents told you when they put your dog/cat down.
It may help you to remember Dorothy Parker:
I like a Martini,
two at the very most,
with three I under the table,
with four I under my host.
Love me some Dorothy Parker!
I like this line about martinis – Two are too many and three are not enough.
Its Labor Day! Fight the Power!
I just got a Tom Morello (ex Rage Against the Machine) CD. Gonna play it real loud.
Is that you, Barry?
Full-time employment, eh? What a snob!
Forget a job – you sound like you may be a candidate for a senior executive position.
She's certainly got the expression of one who's seen more than her fair allotment of Jumbo Hot Dogs.
Gotta get me some of that sweet Wall St monies. Screwing people out of their livelihoods is a great career.
Then, the Editricce was fired for organizing the union of fast-food workers.
At Chick-fil-A, I'm sure.
What Mittens 'Means Jobs' Romney giveth, the Donald 'Means Firing' Trump will taketh away.
The RNC should have gone with the Donald and the Obama impersonator. However, I'm glad they gave us something that will live on and on – as an SNL skit, on the Daily Show, the pages of the Wonkette.
Thanks, RNC!
Conservatives. In a race for the bottom! Maybe when we are broke enough, India will send US some jobs! Yea!
They are leasing here, but still bringing in H1Bs/H1B1s over here. The authorities are thinking this is some sort of proof that the area is thriving. Local 'Murican mid-career engineer can't compete with labor trucked in from Chennai/Bangalore/Mysore/yaddayadda/yadda:
http://www.loudoun.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=340
In welcoming iGate to Loudoun, Supervisor Matt Letourneau, chairman of the Board's Economic Development Committee, said, “Their decision to establish their East Coast headquarters here is a testament to the excellent work and cooperation between the Loudoun County Department of Economic Development, Governor McDonnell, and the Virginia Economic Development Partnership. We will continue to work together to bring jobs and commercial revenue to Loudoun, and are actively working on several other potential prospects.
Out on iGates website? No posting for 'Muricans, only H1B/H1B1s:
http://www.igate.com/opportunities@igate/lca.aspx
So the only white sahib to benefit from this will be the leasing company. Until Indian management tire of living in America and want to pack up the enterprise, lock, stock, and barrel.
We our so screwed.Maybe things will be different under our new Chinese overlords?
Just remember, it's your fault for all of it, too.
Like Herman Caine said, blame yo'self!
Would like to super size that?
Certainly doesn't put the worker in a great bargaining position when it comes to asking for a raise.
Telling workers to ask for a raise is CLASS WORFARE!
When they talk about being free in America, how come workers aren't "free" to form a union?
go back to russia, commie
Did the Jews ask for a raise when they were in Egypt? I think not. Why do you hate the Bible and its moral underpinnings for our great system?
"This is not your fathers Olds career"
"This year, every career will have holes in it's sides"
"Solid as Iraq"?
I think the late 1990s scared the hell out of the Galt class. It was a time when anyone who knew how to spell IP or T1 could actually negotiate wages and benefits. And negotiate as individuals, not collectively. I sometimes think (or I would if I was a conspiracy theorist) the "job creators" vowed to never again let themselves be put in such a position and deliberately stagnated the economy and designed it so it would be very top heavy again.
This is so true. Engineering companies, which had never provided anything for their employees beyond old furniture and pencils, we're now being told by young whippersnappers that they had to buy $5000 IBM PCs for every goddam employee. And not only that, you couldn't just make endless copies of Lotus 1-2-3 for every machine in the office.
Oh, I don't know. I am the worst employee I know. Never get my paperwork done correctly or on time, shave infrequently, make sneering condescending remarks at meetings… and yet, I am the Golden Boy, the Magical Mystery worker. Why?
I can make digital devices behave and talk nice with each other. Quite the talent, now if I just had the guts to move to N Dakota.
Needz moar Todd Akin's Legitimate Grape.
/ courtesy of one of weejee & associates loyal employees
Give that one a raise!
I hear there may be openings in the lamppost, rope and Guillotine industries
Torches and pitchforks?
Everybody – read "A Tale of Two Cities" this weekend so we can get in the mood to kick these greedy mofos' @sses and teach them some manners.
Tarring and feathering has undeservedly fallen out of fashion. What you do is rent one of those roofer's propane-fired tar kettles, hook it up to your trailer hitch, and meet your helpers (who'll all have brought feather pillows) at the victim's home or workplace. You drag him outside, dip him in the molten roofing tar, rip open the pillows and shake the feathers all over him.
Come to think of it, this is really weird. But we won't know for sure until we try it out on Todd Akin.
Before, or after turd
bucketblossom has his way with him?I don't think it would be cruel. And after we've don it a few times it won't be unusual.
Ahhh, the good old days!! Stockades in the town square with nearby bushel baskets of rotting tomatoes and eggs for throwing are nice too. Good times!!
I have a career!
And you can have it, but you will also have to take the massive load of debt acquired in the process.
most young workers may be destined to either cycle through a number of temporary positions in search of better wages
I keep telling the interns that…, and I keep getting sexual harassment suits filed against me.
Well, sexual harassment lawsuits are a more likely way to get rich than actually getting a job.
Low wages? Wait until Romney eliminates the minimum wage law. "Welcome to Bain China, now learn English or get out of here".
This is why when I was in college I took English 224: "You want fries with that?" and Other Useful Phrases for the Workplace.
Hey, I teach that! Grovelling, pointless cover letters for the resume is 25% of the final grade.
Advanced Math 230: "How to make change".
Are they teaching how to make change in Ameros? When I was in college, that wasn't part of the course.
Hey! If I was rich I would read Forbes. I come here instead.
If I were rich, I'd be balling some 25 year old blonde, getting drunk as horse piss everyday, wrecking sports cars, and watching Scarface on repeat. But I'm here on Wonkette instead… no offense guys….
Hell, I do all that shit all night long! I have to take my Ambien first though.
I subscribed once, and can report that Forbes is depressingly snark-free.
Glad I'm an Old, But I'm not an old enough of an Old because I'll be getting one of those Golden Ticket Vouchers and will probably have to compete with my kids for a temp job just so I can pay my medical bills. Oh the Places I Will Go.
But you'll still happily pay your Medicare tax so us genuine Olds can keep getting our sweet, sweet, single-payer, government-negotiated-rate health care, won't you? Because Krugman is making me doubt this, with his whiny little column today.
Pfft. Who does Krugman think he is? A Pulitzer prize winning economist?
Actually he's a Nobel-Prize-winning practitioner of the Dismal Science. And he's right to point out the inter-generational friction this will cause. The same way big business busts unions by negotiating “tiered” benefits and wages, the Republicans want to destroy support for Medicare and Soshecurity by pitting the Youngs against the Olds.
People just don't seem to understand how veery skeery it is for us borderline olds.
Why are all these lazy underemployed college grads not lifting themselves up by their own bootstraps and creating good jobs out of thin air? Maybe some sort of tax cut for the rich is in order.
Well as Herman Cain might say, 'it's they own damn fault!'
In the early days, all Mittens and Ann had to sustain them in their basement apartment was some stocks they could sell off. Why can't Today's Youth do the same?
How can you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps when you don't even have money to buy the boots?
The only career left seems to be in the military, always a need for cannon fodder.
You're unfortunately correct:
http://truth-out.org/news/item/11211-your-must-do…
Is brigandry still considered a career? No? Well, it will be soon enough.
Literate road agent.
I prefer the term 'highwayman', thankyouverymuch. it makes me feel more like Robin Hood and shit.
…and when there was no meat, we ate frog and when there was no frog, we ate crawdad…and when there was no crawdad to be found, we ate sand.
You ate sand?
We ate sand…
that's right.
But you wanted to eat food, not sand…
I'm barren!
I see you're from Louisiana…
I am writing a Phyto Plankton cook book as we speak!
My first recipe is Pithaughn's Plankton Pancakes.
Boy, you got a panty on your head…
Ah, but remember, according to the GOP crowd, its our fault we're poor….
I ain't rich…. but I'm sure as shit not gettin' any younger….
Get right with Jeebuzz and stop having butt sekks with Meszcans. That's the ticket.
Temps waiting to segué to permanent and good luck with that. The receptionist position where I work, formerly occupied for five years by a full-time-with-benefits lucky duck, now has been reduced to part-time and had to fire the first replacement therein when they learned, kinda too late, she had zero computer experience and phones intimidated her.
The latest person to take the job could be the former's granddaughter. She's agreed to eventually be reduced from 40- to 30-hour workweeks as of the new year (rather than accelerating or having the honor of receiving benefits & other full-time perks). Apparently her fiancé will provide her bennies via his job.
She is a young one yet is doing this un-Job following time enough spent as a bank teller — at one point reaching some rank of supervisor, in fact found her way here via some of our other young entry-level's, who apparently co- recruited* her, their former boss, here to take this lowly job — it was better than nothing, the 'nothing else' that's out there.
*i.e. wrote her referrals. A lot is Who You Know as means of landing what few openings are available, no? But to go from bank staff supervisor to this represents an all-time low, to me.
There was a time, OK, not in America, but still, when people would have just dragged the wealthy to a noose for this kind of arrogance. I believe it was those "pussy French" who were best at it.
Allons-y!
Hey Wonkettes I am being ASSAULTED by audio ads from America's for Prosperity when I enter this site. Help, I am now undecided and may switch to Mittens.
Don't make me stop this car!
Include college with careers as being just for olds and no longer attainable (for the little people).
Jumbo sized hot dogs 18 cents? Oh Lordy, the 1950's WERE the Golden years!
Take me there, Mitt! Take me there!!
And only 23 cents for a chili dog! Do you know what I have to pay for a chili dog these days, even with a lady as plain as that waitress?
Wait, we might not be talking about the same thing..
i have a career: basement typist responsible for Cheeto acquisitions.
You have an orange penis don't you?
I was explaining to a woman a couple years ago that the American dream of getting a job that will last until retirement, house, spouse, baby…is dead.
And Flexibility is the new Stability.
You wouldn't believe the condescention in her voice, "Well, some people still want that"…
Did you tell her "You can WANT it all you want, doesn't mean you're going to get it. " I would have probably thrown in some insults too just for good measure, like: "besides you're not pretty enough to marry a 1%, so keep dreaming about that life you'll never have honey."
:D
This sounds like a brilliant plan for a stable, solid society, it'll works out perfectly, just ask the Czar, Marie Antionette, etc.
In this bold new unemployed world, what is this promise of low-wage temp work? Or do only graduates of Chick-Fil-A University qualify?
Graduating from Chick-Fil-A University would definitely help land a job at the Washington Post, or the Washington Times (what's the difference anymore?).
Everybody making 10 bucks an hour, raise your hands with me! Let's celebrate! We made rent!
Low wages because corporate America doesn't compensate workers for the recent increases in productivity. Labor productivity increased 80% since 1980, while average wages only 7%. I am sure Marx is rolling in his grave by now. http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/09/04/op…
But is more than low wages. They screw workers because there are no unions. I have a contract signed with a corporation where I gave up my right to sue the company. They can sue me, but I cannot sue them. You want to get a job? So, give up your civil rights.
College is for Muggles. I don't recall Rowling mentioning anything about Harry, Hermoine or Ron metriculating to university after Hogwarts.
Shorter Forbes:
<loop>Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard.</loop>
I'll be out back, practicing my layup for the Centrifugal Bumblepuppy tourney this weekend.
Mitt Romney, Resident Controller for Oceania really wants the jerb or making jerbs, really badly.
If they want money, let them have credit default swaps. Marie Anntoniete du Romneyrie.
My daughter went to lots of college and has a career! I'm gonna threaten to turn the car around if she doesn't support me.
I went to college… and got herpes there.
What I would give for an 18¢ Jumbo Size hot dog.
Thank goodness the GOP will be getting rid of the remnants of those horrible unions with their demands for increased wages and benefits. Union thugs make is much harder for the job creators to minimum wage jobs in a benefit free environment.
I display my diplomas from the Foley-Belsaw Institute, in my garage, ironically.
This shit just breaks my heart. How did this happen? How did this county get to be such a mean and ugly place? This isn't sustainable; the direction we're heading is one of complete corporate control of everything. I feel like all the truth and beauty is being sucked out of the world.
How do we fix this?
I am a manager. Of people; they only become "recourses" when I have to talk to the assholes in the suits. I am familiar with the temporary worker thing; string them along until we can make them permanent. No benefits, no vacation or sick or holiday pay, nada. It costs us more to pay the supplier than it would to make them permanent! But it looks better on paper I guess and no messy unemployment entanglements should we have to let them go.
When I started at my company we had a pension but we went to a 401k a year after I started. Oh well I still have social security thought I. Now, probably not. I joke about beads and shells but I'll still collect shells when I get the chance. Forget medical care.
How do we stop this slide into some awful hell of an ugly step child of Plutocracy, Fascism, Theocracy and ultimately Authoritarianism (which will be required to keep the people down).
How did it happen? How do we stop it?
Yes, and what grates me is that it's my generation of long-hairs and various mellow, pot smokin' hippies that let it happen. And we used the think our parents were dumb.
Yeah well I am the hippies' younger sister. Fuck them "I Me Me Mine".
When is the revolution?
And I am just venting my spleen in a dead thread.
Ha! We had a working with generation's training. I had to sit and watch the baby boomers describe Gen X as selfish and lazy. As a Gen x-er, I pretty much told them to go fuck themselves, they're the "Original ME Generation ". They've destroyed our entire country and want to sit back and blame the later generations who've been forced become more ruthless so as to not get screwed over by our parents. BY OUR FUCKING PARENTS! FUCK YOU I CAN'T WAIT TO PUT YOUR ASSES IN THE DECREPIT OLDS HOME THAT YOU GUYS HAVE CUT FUNDING FOR AND RUINED.
So, they got their panties in a wad. That's ok, the instructor said my observations were spot on. She was a baby boomer herself but basically said, yup we've done this, we're the selfish fucks who raised an entire generation of jaded selfish fuckers.
The only hope seems to be with the millenials, they're the largest and most socially aware group since the Greatest Generation. Not sure how I feel about that, let's hope they don't get sucked into the Romney/Ryan way of thinking. :(
i think GREED is the answer
There's another delightful aspect to being a temp…you're the red-headed stepchild of the workplace.
Oh…and here's something funny. In the last month two groups started at my employer. I was in one. Of the 12 people starting 4 are permanent and 8 are temps (including me).
All of the permanents are under 30…all of the temps are late 40s and above.
Hmmmm, you don't think there's an age thing going on here, do you?
We've been lowering taxes on the rich for 30 years. When is this trickle-down prosperity supposed to kick in?
When we're all filthy rich?
Not that I want to work for Forbes, or anyone else for that matter, but do you have to be a closeted ghey?
Obey the toaster!
"Because the finance man's gonna be at your house on Saturday, right? That's exactly what the company wants – to keep you on their line. They'll do anything to keep you on their line. They pit the lifers against the new boys, the old against the young, the black against the white – EVERYBODY to keep us in our place." A quote from the movie" Blue Collar" made in 1978. I wish i could snark but it is just to sad..
It's the post-modern definition of career. You could be a boil on Mitt Rombo's ass. Must have prior experience as unpleasant lesion.
This is good news for ITT Tech/University of Phoenix!
Isn't that adorable? Forbes thinks that the America of the future is just going to take this. lol Occupy will end up looking like a picnic.
That's an awful lotta people who won't be reading Forbes. Have they thought of that?
But in that bright shiny future Forbes will simply be downloaded into the brains of our corporate betters.
Thanks, job creators!
Went to share this but then I got confused by the options. What is a slash/dot? Can I have sex with it?
If the 'cons had their way, there'd be NO minimum wage and they'd pay you in moldy gruel for an 18-hour workday with no bathroom breaks.
I am afraid this article is correct. Contributing to this problem is that by drastically reducing the civil service work force, private employers no longer have to compete with government employment in benefits, hours, retirement, etc. Now, the idea that gov wages & vacation are superfab has been so absurdly exaggerated or lied about by the likes of Buckley & Limbaugh that no one actually believes it when they discover many public employees actually make less than the private industry equivalent in monetary pay, yet it's true. Nevertheless, we take our pay in the form of good retirement plans, decent health coverage, etc. I really hate calling them benefits because it is actually services in lieu of wages, not some gifty thingy extra benefit. Still. Not only are many agencies becoming so understaffed as to be unable to fulfill their missions– which feeds the monster lie, "See how incompetent the government is!"– but we hit a tipping point where some fields no longer have to think about competing with government employment standards.
Anecdotally, one of my dear friends is an archeologist. She is about to switch fields due to lack of work and will delay having kids even longer. Archeology was never high-paying, but in the US, the Dept of the Interior once was the largest employer of archeologists, and the pressure was on to at least come close to matching their compensation. No mas. She cannot pay her student loans while working in the field she acquired those loans to study. She cannot get childcare or make enough money to pay for childcare while working in a field that requires a masters. So we can look forward to the day when archeologists are, once again, self funded upperclass eccentrics with a fondness for pith helmets and no need for a salary because they have the family trust, what what.
Here, here! Peasant insurance all 'round!
My radio antenna is my car-ear.
HIT THE DECK BOY!
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